


The Nurse Before Christmas

by Denois



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, bed sharing, brief references to potential sexual activity, canon compliant for all you know, idiots to lovers, minor fall but no injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21946660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Denois/pseuds/Denois
Summary: T'was the night before Christmas and Dex was watching game tape thinking of how his friends would chirp and jape, when out from the roof there arose such a clatter, Dex sprang from his home to see what was the matter.Nursey shows up at Dex's parent's place because he figures Dex can't refuse a gift if it's from Santa. Dex helps him out of the snow after he falls off the roof and they finally talk.
Relationships: Derek "Nursey" Nurse/William "Dex" Poindexter
Comments: 12
Kudos: 101





	The Nurse Before Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by seeing various "Twas the Night Before Christmas" things and "the Knight Before Christmas" (except I haven't seen that, so only the fact that it exists). The question arose in my mind...What if Dex heard a noise on his roof and it turned out to be Nursey?
> 
> Unbetaed because people be busy and I be impatient.
> 
> TW minor allusion to people getting stuck in tight spaces. To avoid, skip the paragraph after "Chill. That's a solid point."

The game video ended and Dex hit the button to pause as the next one started. He rubbed at his eyes. If the other Frogs knew that he was watching game tape on Christmas Eve, they’d never stop chirping him about taking over as hockey robot from Jack. A glance at the clock told him that it was nearly midnight, over an hour after his parents had gone to bed (immediately after watching the news to get the weather, per their routine). They should be asleep. He carefully set his laptop to the side and stood up, pausing to stretch. 

A noise on the roof made him pause. A louder scratching and thud made him fling open his door and quickly and quietly rush outside. That had sounded bigger than a raccoon, and the last thing he needed was some teenager playing a prank, missing a rafter and then falling through the roof on Christmas eve. As soon as he opened the door, he heard another scrabble and managed to see in his peripheral vision as a large mass fell from the roof and into the giant snowbank beside the trailer. 

“Oh...Chill.”

Dex cursed under his breath.

“Nurse?”

The question was unnecessary. He recognized the voice. 

He jumped off the porch into the snow and waded over to where Nursey was still laying so that he could help him up. “Are you ok?”

“Ch’yeah. Snow broke my fall.” 

“Ayuh. Otherwise you would have fallen a lot further and probably broken something. Again.” He gestured for Nursey to head towards the door through the path that he’d just forged.

“Chill, Poindexter. I’m fine.” Nursey looked back at him with a smirk before climbing awkwardly onto the porch and then clung to the rail to pull himself into a standing position. It was awkward and clumsy and definitely not cute.

Dex reminded himself of that as he stepped up after him. He pushed open the door and gestured. “Get comfortable on the couch or whatever. I’ll get the space heater going again.” 

“Thanks.”

Nursey was giving him weird furtive looks as he moved the space heater over and turned it back on. He purposefully turned away from Nursey to put the draft stopper back across the bottom of the door. 

“What are you doing here, Nurse? Why were you climbing on my roof in the middle of the night?” 

Nursey rolled his eyes. “I was trying to deliver your gift.”

The statement was delivered like it was the most obvious thing in the world and made perfect sense.

Dex closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “You’re not giving me a gift.”

“See! That’s why I needed to leave it like Santa. You can’t refuse a gift from Santa.”

“Shh. Keep it down. My parents are sleep-”

“Will? Do you have a boy over?” 

Dex took a couple of big steps to head his ma off before she came into the living room in her pajamas. “It’s ok, Ma. You’ve got an early shift tomorrow. Go back to sleep.”

“William Jacob Poindexter. You are an adult and you know I don’t mind you having boys over, but you can at least introduce me to your boyfriend instead of shuffling me off like you’re ashamed of me.”

Dex took another deep breath and rolled his lips between his teeth before replying. “N-” 

“I wish.” 

Nursey’s comment was barely audible, but it made Dex swallow the denial before it even left his mouth. 

“No, Ma. It’s Nursey, Derek, from the hockey team. He was just in the area and stopped by.”

She gave him a pointed look and raised her eyebrows. “You don’t usually greet teammates half naked, Will. Don’t stay up too late.” With that, she turned back down the hall. 

Dex wasn’t sure what she meant and his brow furrowed in confusion as he looked down. Maybe he should just leave his eyes closed. Maybe this was all a dream and he’d wake up on Christmas morning. He wasn’t that lucky. He had rushed out into the snow and spent however long talking to Nursey with no shirt on. Well, his flannel was technically on his body, but it was open and he hadn’t put an undershirt on. He was lucky that he’d still been wearing his jeans because he hadn’t stopped to throw on clothes at all when he heard the first noise. Honestly, he was glad that he hadn’t because Nursey wasn’t used to dealing with the structure of mobile homes and if he’d gotten all the way onto the roof, he definitely would have stepped between the rafters and fallen through. 

He waited until she closed the door and then slipped into his own room while buttoning his shirt. It gave him a chance to grab the bag from the bottom of his closet. Even if his ma did hear him now, she’d blame it on him talking to Nursey. 

Nursey was unnaturally quiet when he got back to the living room. 

“Now, what did you mean, you needed to leave it like Santa?” Dex glanced at Nursey, but then focused on dividing up the trinkets in the bag and dropping them into stockings. If Nursey wanted to be weird, that was on him.

“What are you doing?”

“Filling the stockings. You didn’t answer the question.”

“That’s not usually done by the kids.”

“Yeah well. Santa couldn’t make it to Maine this year.” He didn’t clench his jaw. It wasn’t Nursey’s fault that he didn’t understand. It wasn’t Nursey’s fault that Dex was filling his parents’ stockings with dollar store candy and dollar store miscellania that rode the line between useful and fun and cheap trash.

“You won’t let me give you things. But you’d accept a gift from Santa. So I was going to leave your present under the tree.”

It took a moment for Dex to process how that matched up with Nursey climbing on the roof. 

“Wait, were you planning on sliding down the chimney?” He turned and stared at Nursey incredulously.

“Ch’yeah. Seemed like a good way to get in the house. Couldn’t exactly knock.”

“It’s a mobile home. It doesn’t have a chimney, Nurse.” 

Nursey appeared taken aback and blinked a few times. “Chill. That’s a solid point.”

Dex forced himself not to think about the stories of people getting stuck and trapped in chimneys from trying stunts like that. They didn’t have a chimney, Nursey didn’t get stuck. There was no reason to worry about something that couldn’t have happened. 

"Fine, what was so important that you had to come all the way to Maine and climb on my roof?"

Nursey looked away before reaching into his coat and pulling out a thin box wrapped with a ribbon and holding it out. “Why’d you say your mom has to work in the morning? It’s Christmas.”

It was obvious that Nursey was trying to detract attention from the fact that he’d either spent a lot of money on a last minute flight or somewhere between six and eight hours on a bus or train just to get this box to Dex. Dex eyed the box warily and let the distraction happen. “She’s a nurse aide. Holidays don’t really apply. She’ll get time and a half for working it though.” 

“Oh, chill.”

The ribbons slid off easily after he removed the small bit of tape holding them to the box and there was no wrapping paper, just a fancy box with lid, so he opened it up. Sam Smith tickets. In Boston. A weekend they had a bye on Saturday. 

“I knew you’d want to see them, but you’d never buy tickets for yourself.”

He kept staring at the gift. “Why’d you come all the way to Maine, Nurse?”

Nursey didn’t answer immediately, taking a slight pause. “Because I needed to give you your gift.”

Technically, it wasn’t true and they both knew it. The concert was far enough off that Nursey could have given him the tickets when they returned to Samwell. A deep breath and Dex finally lifted his gaze to meet Nursey’s eyes. He pleaded silently for Nursey to understand that he needed to say it first.

“Why did you come to Maine, Derek?”

“Being with you just feels right to me.”

Of course. Of course, Nursey wouldn’t just say it. But Dex couldn’t keep running every time it started and if he was wrong and ruined everything, well. Nursey managed to get himself to Maine in the middle of the night, he could manage to get to a hotel for the rest of the night just as easy.

He held one of the tickets out towards Nursey. “If you want, you could go to the concert with me. As my boyfriend.” 

Nursey slowly reached out and took the ticket as a smile slid across his face. “You like me, Poidexter?”

“Yeah.” There was no use denying it or diminishing it. He liked Nursey. He was pretty sure he was in love with Nursey. He just never for a moment thought that Nursey might like him back until tonight. 

“Good. Cuz I kinda like you a lot, too.” 

Dex smiled with a relieved sigh. He stepped in close in front of Nursey, caressing his cheek and tilting his head so that when Dex leaned down he could bring their lips together. Nursey surged into it like Dex was taking too long and he almost had to break off the kiss to laugh. 

Eventually he did pull back though, his fingers still running over the skin of Nursey’s neck, reminding him that it wasn’t a dream. “If you’re warmed up, I can give you your present in my room.”

“Oh, chill.” Nursey was grinning and winked at Dex but left his eye closed for a long time before opening it again. 

Dex tilted his head, slightly confused. Surely Nursey didn’t think that’s how winks worked. Had Nursey been winking at him for years and Dex just thought his eye hurt? Now wasn’t the time to worry about that. He shook the thoughts from his head and turned off the space heater before double checking that the front door was locked and all the lights were out. 

By the time he got to his room, Nursey had his coat and top off and was working on pulling his pants off, so Dex squeezed by to get to his dresser. He set a pair of sweatpants on the top and then held out another pair for Nursey while digging for the package.

“What’s this?”

“Uh, sweatpants? You were getting undressed so I figured you were ready for bed but you don’t have any luggage, so…” He trailed off. 

“Oh. Chill. I thought you were going to give me something. Nevermind.” 

Dex furrowed his brow in confusion before holding up the wrapped package that he’d shoved into his dresser three days before to keep from stressing over if he should toss it out or actually take it back to Samwell to give to Nursey. 

“Oh. I get it. Sorry. My bad.” 

Dex stood up slowly and reached out to Nursey, pulling him closer, not a difficult task in the small room. “Hey, anything you want, okay? Just, um, not when my parents are asleep in the next room. This place has thinner walls than the Haus.” 

He could really get used to the feel of Nursey’s soft lips parting under his own. It took an enormous amount of self control to pull away so that he’d stick to what he’d just asked. 

“Anything?”

He opened his mouth to confirm but paused. “Uh, any of the standard stuff and we can discuss specifics when we’re not here. Open your present.”

Nursey grinned and then ripped the paper off to reveal the handbound leather journal. He didn’t say anything, just stared at it, tracing a finger over the leaves that Dex’d tooled and carved into the cover, flipping through the pages. 

Reminding himself to breathe, Dex swallowed and waited. It was a stupid gift really. No one liked handmade gifts. They always say they appreciated it, but no one actually liked them. And Nursey just gave him a really great gift. He didn’t talk about how much Sam Smith meant to him. How much he’d been wanting to go to a concert but they always seemed too expensive or interfered with work or hockey. Nursey clearly put a lot of thought into what Dex would want and not feel like was too expensive and made sure it would actually work out. And what had Dex done for Nursey? A poetry journal when anyone off the street could have gotten him a better one. 

Finally, Nursey swallowed and looked up. “Damn, Will. Way to make my present look like shit.”

“You don’t have to chirp me. I know it’s like, surface level of your likes and not, like, up to your usual quality.” He turned away and started changing into the sweatpants and pulling off his flannel to hide his blush. 

“Will, babe. I get to call you babe now, btw. Babe. I’m not chirping you. I love this. I’m going to fill it with poetry about you.” 

Dex tried to weigh the likelihood that the poetry would be more chirping vs it being earnest. He let out a sigh. There wasn’t actually anything that said it couldn’t be both. He turned and wrapped his arms around Nursey again. 

“You ready for bed? I’ve got about five hours before I wanna be up to make breakfast so I can get my ma to open her presents before work.” 

Nursey nodded and climbed into his bed, pressing up against the wall. “Doesn’t leave much time to sleep.”

Dex smiled as he climbed in after. “Who said anything about sleeping?” 

He used one arm to prop himself up over Nursey while he ran his thumb over Nursey’s jaw before leaning down and pressing another kiss to his lips. 

“Kissing was never off the table.”

“Mmm. Merry Christmas to me.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am available to be yelled at on tumbls at [SexyDexyNurse](https://sexydexynurse.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Poindexter house based loosely on various houses my dad lived in while I was growing up. 
> 
> Adjustments to real life events had to be made to fit this to the Frog Junior year (aka, Y4 of the comic), because I don't want these idiot to wait another year to stop second guessing and just say how they feel. Primarily, _The Thrill of It All_ moved up a year to come out in October 2016, and concert dates added for Sam Smith to have a concert in the first couple of months of 2017 in Boston.


End file.
